


If I Just Lay Here (would you lie with me and just forget the world)

by ari_sia



Category: Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Injury, Gang Violence, Gun Violence, Hitman!Kartik, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Tea, What Was I Thinking?, like lots of tea, not as violent as the tags make it sound, of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ari_sia/pseuds/ari_sia
Summary: The first time Kartik meets Aman, he tries to kill the man.Every other time Kartik meets Aman, he is glad he didn't.
Relationships: Kartik Singh/Aman Tripathi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	If I Just Lay Here (would you lie with me and just forget the world)

**Author's Note:**

> This is trash. Hopefully, it is mildly entertaining trash.  
> will proofread one day.

Kartik is running.

The man ahead of him is stumbling and panicking but he was still considerably fast. But there was no need to rush, the stairs would eventually lead to the roof and then there would be nowhere left for the man to run. While the man he was chasing was already out of breath, frantically pushing anything he saw on the stairs towards Kartik to slow him down, he had barely even broken a sweat. He jumped over the box of files the man had tipped over rather gracefully and enjoyed as the man let out a little shriek on seeing Kartik so close to him. This would be a rather easy kill.

Then his earpiece buzzes alive.

“Not now, Saf” He says not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice.

“Yes now, boss! we need to talk.”

Kartik watches the target disappear through the door to the roof and he runs like he means it this time.

“The target is running away, Saf.”

Saf snorts.

“When have you let a target get away, Sir DeadEye?” Kartik’s eye twitches in irritation at the horrible nickname.

And just as she says that Kartik just makes it through the door in time to see the man lunge from the roof. What even—

Kartik ran towards the edge and saw the man land onto the next building which was a good ten feet lower than the one Kartik was on. The man was limping away looking smug.

“This is _important_ ” Saf emphasizes. Kartik doesn’t bother turning his earpiece off. He could make the jump if he wanted to but he’d have a better chance of just taking him out from here.

“It can wait.”

The distance is…not ideal but Kartik can work with it. So, he breathes and aims on the man limping through the roof. He takes a good few seconds to navigate the target’s movements with his finger on the trigger and right as the bullet leaves the nozzle, Saf finally gets to the point.

“b-but you told me to tell you whenever someone promising information on The Vipers popped up. This isn’t like the last ones either, he looks legit. Like he actually has information y’know—boss? Are you listening to me? Hello?”

The target isn’t moving. It would be worrying if he was, Kartik _had_ just put a bullet right through his skull. Kartik is walking downstairs almost immediately, before someone spots him. He climbs down careful to not look at anyone and keeps his head down.

“Are we taking that job or not?” Saf whines, “He wants us to break into the Hopewell Facility and it’s going to take me a while to research it so _tell_ _me already_ ”

The name _Hopewell_ rings in his head for a while, stirring up memories he had tried so hard to bury. Then his fingers twitch, with exhilaration and eagerness.

“Saf?” He calls out cheerfully.

“Y-yeah boss?”

“I need you to find me a new apartment.”

“Do I look like a real estate agent to you?”

“Thank you Saf, oh and please don’t forget to do a background check on the residents”

“Where are you even moving to?” Saf grumbles.

Kartik makes it out of the building without any complications and as soon as he is on the main road he signals a taxi.

Someone had promised him The Vipers and Kartik had no choice but the move back to the city where nightmares thrived. The home ground of the snakes and the place that had taken his family away from him.

“It seems like I’m going to back home.” He announces gleefully.

▼

Kartik tried not to notice how place had changed since he’d left as he drove. It only looked as if it had changed but deep down Kartik knew it was the same place he’d left behind.

His city was rotten to the core. Crime thrived and corrupt cops turned a blind eye to everything, it was the playground of the rich and powerful.Here, It’s either you or the other guy. No wonder it had created something like Kartik. His work outside the city hadn’t been pleasant by any standard but the things he did here? To call them gruesome would be an understatement. Kartik was capable of violence, just like any other person, but the city tapped into the capability with such ease it almost made you feel as if you were doing the right thing or rather it erased the concept of ‘the right thing’. Its rot spreads and gnaws and chips away everything tame in you until all that’s left behind is a feral animal. 

He had to wipe every trace of himself when he’d left and now five years later, here he is again, hunting for an apartment. The GPS signaled that he was at his destination and Kartik parked. Eden Apartments, the sign read. It was smack dab in the middle of the city but that wasn’t the only reason he’d come here. The ten-storey building towered over Kartik as stepped into through the doors. There were two elevators on each side of the room and a narrow hallway that turned around to the left right at the end.

He has barely finished scanning the floor when another man enters the door and Kartik turns around to look at him, short stature, hair parted perfectly and shoulders slouching as if they carried the weight of the entire world. He passes Kartik by without even sparing him a glance. As the man turned around the narrow hallway, Kartik thinks he sees the familiar ink on his neck but he couldn’t be sure.

Kartik looks around at the empty floor and decides to follow the man. He is cautious to not be too conspicuous as he follows him into an elevator around the corner that is smaller than the ones that were in the main hall. The man still doesn’t look at him and Kartik couldn’t get a good look at his neck.

Kartik tried to read the man who was now leaning on the side of the elevator with his eyes closed as if he had no strength to spare. He just couldn’t get anything off of him and his hand instinctively flew to the hilt of his knife gripping it tight. The man didn’t move an inch.

The anticipation was deafening in the silence. Kartik clutches the knife tighter, the numbers blink and the arrow moves upwards. Kartik tries to make a decision and then somewhere in the chaos of nothingness their eyes meet just for a fraction of a second. Brown hollow eyes stared at him and Kartik felt so aware of how real he was when they did, as if no one had ever really looked at him before. Then they were gone again.

“You’re in the wrong elevator.” The defeated voice lingers in his ears for far longer than it should’ve, “This is used by the cleaning staff.” _Ah, no wonder it smells like bleach in here,_ he thinks.

“You’re here too.” Kartik points out and the guy still won’t look at him. He just shrugs. 

Kartik removes his grip from the knife and holds out his hand, “I’m Kartik. I’m here to take a look at the apartments”

The guy doesn’t take the hand, “not a resident yet then”.

The elevator doors open and as Aman walks out Kartik notices that the man's neck is devoid of any ink.

▼

Kartik settles into his new apartment a week later with a map of the city, the floor plans of the Hopewell Facility and a breakdown of its security system, the last one being a courtesy of his newest employer. There didn’t seem to be many guards around at night but all of the locks were digital which meant he’d need Saf. He hadn’t contacted her yet and he wasn’t looking forward to it, knowing she would just prattle on about her Masterplan to get the job done. Her masterplans were of course, fantastic. Fantastic ways to get killed, that is. He closes the map of the city and turns in for the night.

Kartik dreams that night. Of fire creeping up on his left arm, of people around him screaming and of …her, in the hospital: crying and in excruciating pain.

“It wasn’t an accident.” There is fear in her eyes. Kartik chooses it to ignore it. To write it off as trauma. There’s dark shadows creeping up on her and a man with his skin inked with snakes grins widely. Then he is awake. The digital clock reads 4:12 a.m and his hand twitches. He has an urge to sink his nails into his wrist and claw his arm open so he can feel okay again.

▼

Kartik opens his front door right in time to bump into his next-door neighbour, the _only_ other person living on the floor with him and he feels a smug grin creep up on his face when his neighbour’s eyes meet his.

“Good morning”, he says with the eat-shit grin still on his face and relishes in the look of pure irritation on the man’s face.

The man sighs, looks at the floor, then back at Kartik and holds out his hand as if he was being forced to do so, “I’m Aman”

“ _Hello_ Aman!” Kartik says shaking his hand a little too aggressively, “It is _so_ nice to meet you.” Aman frowns and pulls his hand away from Kartik’s grip.

“Yeah whatever.” Aman is already walking off towards the elevator, the one that’s supposedly only used by the cleaning staff, but Kartik was having too much fun.

“Off to work, are we Aman?” Aman just keeps walking.

“Awfully rude to ignore your pretty neighbour!” Kartik calls and _then_ Aman turns around.

“Listen. Don’t talk to me like you know me okay. Just leave me the fuck alone.”

Aman is actually seething with his eyebrows furrowed and eyes glaring daggers at him. Kartik finds the whole thing very amusing. Kartik shrugs, still smiling. Aman shakes his head and stomps off childishly.

“Have fun at work, Aman!” Kartik catches the man rolling his eyes just as the elevator doors closed and he makes a point to wave him off to work every single morning.

▼

“Saf.”

“I’m here. You sure about this though?”

“For once the job isn’t to kill someone. Can’t be _that_ bad.”

Heists weren’t his usual thing. He wasn’t used to Saf being around the entire time either, he could practically feel her anxiousness leaking through the earpiece.

There were no lights around the Facility except on the main metal wire gate and the front porch of the building. There was a fence all around it, followed by a small patch of grass on the front that then led to the building itself. Kartik would’ve sneaked in through the back in the cover of the darkness, where the fence was closest to the building’s wall, cut out a chunk of it and broken a window or something to get in but Saf insisted that she could just get him through the front doors. Kartik crouched around the fence as he went towards the door and saw the guard sleeping in his little booth by the door.

“I’m here” he whispered and the metal door pulled open with a jerk. The guard hadn’t seemed to have woken up. So Kartik moved towards the facility through the grass and waited, suddenly glad for the lack of lights around the building.

“How much longer, Saf?”

“Just be patient or do you want me to end up triggering the alarm?”

Then the door opens and Kartik is in.

The Hopewell Research Facility was shrouded in darkness. He made his way through the darkness relying on his memory of the floor plans. He hadn’t seen a single soul yet and it was making him worry. It shouldn’t be this easy. He makes his way to the second floor through the staircase. Then he hears a loud thud on the earpiece and Saf yelps.

“Uh-oh” Saf says and Kartik knows what’s coming.

The alarm went off.

“Dammit Saf!”

“Shut up I’m trying my best here okay!”

“I don’t pay you for trying!”

“ _Nooo_ you pay me for finding apartments for you like I'm your stupid assistant and out of all the options, you choose the trashiest possible option.” She lets out a growl of frustration, “There’s no time fix this. I’ll delay the police at the doors and you go find the serum or whatever.”

Kartik threw caution to the wind and ran like hell towards Research Lab 3. The hallway leading to the lab was actually lit up and the words Research Lab 3 glowed in red like a sign leading him towards danger.

Then he hears footsteps and he immediately backs away into the darkness of the staircase.

“Boss?”

“Shut up, there’s someone here.” He whispers. Kartik pokes his head out just enough to be able to see what was happening.

A man walked through the door right next to the staircase he was on. The man glanced at the research lab and then cautiously walked towards the staircase and Kartik backed up again, keeping an eye on the man’s shadow steadily moving towards him.

As soon as the man was close enough, Kartik lunged.

The man was easy and Kartik gets cocky. That’s why he doesn’t see the knife until it is already inside him. He stumbles, reeling back from the sharp pain in his abdomen but the man looked even more surprised than him. That split second of hesitation was all Kartik needed to knock the man out with a good punch. He places one hand on his wound, gritting his teeth with pain and searches the body with his free hand. He finds an ID on the man’s coat and realizes that he was just a researcher and not a part of the security detail. That…was embarrassing. Good thing Saf didn’t have any cameras on him or she would never let him live this down.

He further pats down the body and finds a key card on him. He tried his best to walk to lab without aggravating the wound anymore and almost breathes with relief when the lab opens as he slides the key card. Almost.

“There’s people in here.” He whispered out to no one in particular, or at least they looked like people. They were as still as dolls hooked to god knows how many machines pumping fluids into their bodies that were riddled with surgery marks and sutures. There were a good ten bodies there, men, women, children. Kartik had seen a lot of things in his time but this—this _shook_ him.

“What?” Saf answered, positively frantic, “Bodies” is all he can say.

“Well" Saf says hesitantly, "It is a drug research facility. I assume they run clinical trials." That still doesn't calm Kartik down. It just felt so eerie seeing all those people like that.

"Boss, we don’t have time!” 

So Kartik shakes his head and remembers what his employer and told him. He walks towards what seemed like main desk and looks for a large silver case. He couldn’t take the entire case, too heavy and too conspicuous. He opens it, grabs the all the vials in it and runs towards the door but through the small window he can see two policemen on the floor examining the unconscious researcher. He ducks behind the door before they can see him.

“Saf” She doesn’t answer and the policemen’s voices grow louder. Then he starts to panic just a little.

“Kusum?” There’s another pause before--“I told you to not call me that, DeadEye.” Kartik’s eye twitches in irritation.

“I can keep them out of the lab for a while but that’s all I can do.”

Kartik rolled his eyes, turned off the earpiece and looked for an exit. According to the building plans Saf had sent him there was a fire exit right down the hall but he would have to take down the policemen and that would be too much trouble. Kartik went through the only other door in the room which opened into a small office and saw a window open. It was just the second floor and he had only been _lightly_ stabbed.

True to himself, Kartik did what he shouldn’t have done and jumped out the window. He landed on his feet letting out a small yelp of pain. Then he stood up straight and walked down into the small alley disappearing into the shadows trying to shake off what he had just seen.

As long as he got the job done, nothing else mattered.

▼

Here’s how Kartik’s world works: You kill certain individuals and in return you get paid in cash and sometimes information. So far collecting information on The Vipers had been hard which shouldn’t have been surprising considering how good they were at tying up loose ends. He had thought of infiltrating the group but they were small and careful with who they let into the group and Kartik’s history would lead to some…complications.

No one even knew who the leader was. All they knew was a name, _Ozul_ , a shadow. A shadow Kartik had spent the better part of his life chasing. For the lower rung jobs, they just used hired muscle. It was cheaper and they didn’t have to deal with any security risks. So, when a job popped up promising him information about them, he couldn’t pass it up.

Safety, Kartik realized, was in anonymity. No relations, well, except—

‘Don’t miss the dinner tomorrow’: A text from Dr. Jain lit up his screen as he stumbled into the hallway of his apartment building, hoping desperately he wouldn’t run into anyone at this hour.

“Just remember to take your immunosuppressants okay?” Dr. Jain had worn a look of exhaustion and anxiety this morning as she often did when she talked to her daughter.

“Hey” She had looked at Kartik in surprise, whispered a quick I love you into the phone and hung up to engulf him in a hug, “Look who came out of his cave. I really thought you were dead this time.”

“Please, what’s going to kill me in a tiny apartment?”

“Caffeine overdose probably.”

“You can’t die from too much caffeine.”

Dr. Jain raised her eyebrows but said nothing making Kartik genuinely falter for a second

“Can you?”

“You have a PhD in biochemistry”, is her answer. _Forged_ _PhD_. But hey, his master's degree was real.

“You are having dinner with me tomorrow” Kartik had tried to intervene but the doctor quickly added, “Tomorrow is the only night I’m free the whole week and you never stay here longer than three days anyway so just suck it up,”

Kartik just nodded. He could survive one dinner.

She had been so scared of his obsession with The Vipers that when Kartik said he was leaving the city she couldn’t have been happier.

He needed someone connected to the hospital, just in case. But that’s just what he told himself to not admit that he actually liked her. Liked being taken care of and being treated like a person. She was the closest thing he had to a family, to a mother and the business he was in didn’t allow relationships like that to end well.

It isn’t until he reaches his front door that he feels the pain kicking in. His vision blurs and he stumbles a little before an arm catches him, stabilizing him.

“Are you okay?”,A voice floats in. Kartik turns around to catch Aman’s blurry face staring at him. _Leave it to him to wander in the hallway in the middle of the night._

“Shit you’re bleeding.”

 _No, I’m not_. He tries to say but the words come out slurred and muddled.

“Hold on, I’ll get you to a hospital”

That snaps Kartik out of his trance, “No! No hospital” he chokes out somehow, trying to push Aman away realizing how shady this entire situation must look to Aman now. Kartik is trying to formulate a plan to run but there’s just too much pain. He could knock Aman out but—that train of thoughts is cut short because Aman isn’t doing anything.

He’s just looking at Kartik with his lips pursed and then he breaks, “Give me the keys.”

Kartik wordlessly fumbles for his keys and hands them to Aman who opens the door. He somehow stumbles onto his sofa with Aman’s help and Aman is already lifting his shirt without any warning.

“Hey, you should at least take me to dinner first.”

Aman just gave him a look that made Kartik feel like a child. He didn’t like Aman touching him, he didn’t trust him but he wasn’t giving him much of a choice either. Aman barely even glanced at the gun stuck to Kartik's belt much less ask any questions.

“You’ve been _stabbed._ ” He pointed out as if that was supposed to mean something and maybe Kartik was just imagining it but Aman almost sounded concerned.

“Oh yeah? I hadn’t noticed.”

Aman just sighed and then got up, “Hold on.”

Aman leaves the apartment and moments later returns with what seemed like a first aid kit but Kartik couldn’t be sure. There was so much crap in that it scared Kartik.

“Woah there, are we going to war?”

“Shut up.” He says as he cleans the blood around the wound with a rag and then hands Kartik another clean rag to press to the wound.

Kartik nervously watched Aman fill up a syringe with a liquid, “Hey, I hope you know I’m sorry if I’ve ever offended you.”

“You’re in so much pain you can barely get your voice out and yet you insist on being cheeky while I’m trying to help you.”

Kartik pouted.

“ _This_ is a local anaesthetic. Lidocaine, if you really have to know. I need to give this to you so I can stitch your wound without causing you more pain. Unless, you prefer otherwise”

Aman looked serious, which he kind of always did but this felt different. Yeah, he shouldn’t trust him, _he shouldn’t_ but there was something about the way Aman looked at him, the genuine concern in his eyes , that made him want to take his chances with him.

“No. Do what you have to, doc”

Aman was slowly stitching his wound up with his gloved hands and he starts to feel the fatigue of the day’s events kick in. Aman’s eyebrows furrowed a little every time he leaned in to tie off another stitch and there were beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“How do you know this shit?” He whispers softly, not having the strength to talk properly.

“I was a medical resident. Left in the second year.” Aman doesn’t look up from the wound.

“Oh” That wasn’t in the background check.

“You sound surprised.” Aman’s voice has a hint of amusement in it and Kartik doesn’t know why but he likes it. It was the only remotely positive emotion Aman had shown him.

“You’re not asking any questions.”

“I’m not sure I would like the answers.”

Kartik laughs and Aman finally moves away from him, “There. All done.” He says looking a little proud of himself and Kartik couldn’t help but smile at that. Aman’s brightness drops as soon as his eyes catch Kartik’s.

Kartik watches Aman clean up the mess of bloodied rags and bandages throwing them in the trashcan. He then started shovelling all his equipment into his first aid kit without thinking, almost in as if he was in a hurry to get out of here. Seeing him like this amused Kartik more than it should have.

“So, what else can you stitch doc?”

Aman’s head snaps up and he finally seems a little flustered.

“You’re incorrigible”

Aman pushes Kartik away but he’s careful with his wounds. Kartik finds a certain sense of pride on seeing the blush that had settled on Aman’s cheeks. Aman then walks out and closes the door gently behind him, making not a single sound as he left.

Then Kartik is alone again. With his loneliness comes this sudden urge to claw his stomach open and he stays very still until it passes. He doesn’t know when he falls asleep but he’s grateful that he did.

▼

The next morning Aman still rolls his eyes when Kartik waves him off to work but mutters a quiet, “You should be in bed” and Kartik feels oddly warm. Kartik was a naturally curious person and it was hence, very natural for him to want to explore whatever it was about Aman that made him feel warm, and drew him to the man.

But no matter what anyone might think, Kartik is _not_ getting hurt on purpose, or taking every job he can get his hands on. He’s just been having more accidents and that happens in his line of work. Sometimes people stab you, other times a bullet grazes you and that’s not his fault.

He’s definitely not giving his targets more of a chance to fight back just so he would have an excuse to see Aman, no, that is not what’s happening here.

But it is true that the time he passed out on Aman’s couch, he made tea that smelled heavenly and that made Kartik think if only he could have this every day. He is definitely not doing this so he can experience that again.

“Hey doc”

Kartik isn’t bleeding that badly today. He isn’t even hurt that bad, just a few scratches and a gash on his forehead. He wasn’t as good with knives as he was with guns. Close range combat really wasn’t his forte.

“You really should go to a hospital.”

Kartik remains quiet as Aman bandages his head, “If it’s a safety concern I can work past that” Aman continues.

“I just can’t stand hospitals” Aman’s eyes flicker towards him in question and then back to his forehead.

Kartik could have said a million other things, told him a lie that would’ve been more believable but instead he opts for the truth, “I watched my sister die. 3rd degree burns.”

“I see”, is Aman’s response. Aman didn’t work that well with words but Kartik knew from the way Aman’s hand lingered on his forehead for longer than it needed to, the way his hold on his arm became gentler that the man was trying to comfort him. He even lets him sleep on his couch without any complains. He liked that better than words.

That night he dreams of the fire. He wonders if that was the price of the truth. He wakes up nauseous and vomits his guts out. By the time he is back in the living room Aman is already awake, staring at him with mild concern.

“Are you okay?” Kartik wants to know what it is exactly about Aman worrying about him, taking care of him that makes him both want to stay forever and go running for the hills.

“Just a nightmare” Kartik settles down on the sofa before his legs give out, trying to brush the whole thing off.

“Tell me about it.” And there it is again, a chance to talk. To pour. Just four words and Aman has given Kartik a chance to be someone real again, someone with scars, with memories that plague his dreams and thoughts that haunt his reality. It wasn’t that Aman made Kartik want to be good, he just made him want to be a person again. It sucked that after spending so long trying to be otherwise, Kartik’s heart was still human and it yearned for a connection.

“I was out screwing around on the streets that evening. I should’ve been inside that house. Instead… I watched it burn down with—” a breath, Kartik never had to tell this story. He didn’t know where to begin or how to begin, really but he tried.

“It was Devika’s house that burned down.” He felt his heartbeat start to rise again, “Our fathers worked together and we both didn’t have mothers so half the time we were at each other’s house listening to our fathers complain about how hard it was to raise a child, even though they were shit at it. We were practically siblings.” He smiles weakly at Aman who is staring at him soundlessly.

“I was supposed to be there with them.”—his voice cracks and he takes another deep breath, “with _her_.”

“When I got to the street, all I could see was smoke and I felt so small in front of those orange flames.” Kartik’s arm starts to shake a little again but Aman doesn’t say anything.

“I ran in. That’s how I got this.” Kartik points to the burn that ran along the length of his left arm, “I didn’t get through of course, the firefighters pushed me back but the heat was so high I could feel it searing my flesh and she was in there, she _had been_ in there for who knows how long.”

Kartik goes quiet for a moment and only then he is aware of how still the air around him is. There is no movement from Aman and the flat is dead quiet and yet it felt as the world around him was buzzing.

“They got her out and the doctor said she would be okay. ‘Just needs rest’ they kept on saying and I let myself have hope.” He thinks of the white of the hospital walls and pitiful glances thrown at him. The newly orphaned boy who was just about to lose someone dear to him. It sickened him to think about it even now.

“Whenever she was told the fire was just an accident she would freak out. ‘It wasn’t an accident.” She kept insisting but I didn’t believe her. I believed the doctors when they said it was the trauma talking and--” Kartik can’t help himself. He indulges in the what ifs and thinks about what could’ve been if only--

“and I believed the doctor when she said I would have enough time to talk to her. She’s a nice woman. Meant well. Her daughter was sick too, some heart disease so I guess she understood what I was going through. Even checked up on me after I was sent to an orphanage but she was wrong. She still insists it was just an accident every time I bring it up.” Dr. Jain was the only person who looked at Kartik as if he was human and not a charity case. For that he’s still grateful.

“Maybe it _was_ an accident.” Aman says very quietly and he isn’t condescending like the police were nor does he sound saddened like Dr. Jain did. He was just putting forth a possibility.

“Boy, do I wish that were true.”

Aman nods as if urging him to go on.

“My father” The words leave a bitter taste in his mouth still, “was a runner for the local gang. Drug peddler, messenger, loan shark. Whatever the higher ups needed him to be that week. Messy business means there’s a million messy ways for you to go out” And they took Devika out with them.

“You can’t know that”

“I can and I do.” Kartik remembers the man with a snake tattoo on his neck hanging outside Devika’s room. He’d been there since the day she was admitted to the hospital but everyone just pretended as if he wasn’t there so Kartik just did the same. He didn’t know anything back then. He hadn’t even heard the name The Vipers. “Because I woke up one day and she was dead and they had already cremated her. That was three days after the doctors had assured me she would be okay.” When Devika disappeared, the man was gone too. It took him ages to figure out that his father had been working for The Vipers but when he did, everything fell into place.

“I-“ Aman opens his mouth to say something and then decides against it,he opts for “I am sorry” instead. Kartik almost says, ‘you should be’ but the apology was too sincere for him to be bitter about it.

There are things a man like Kartik would never put into words and yet as he sits in front of Aman vaguely aware of his mouth going dry and tears stinging at the back of his eyes. Kartik’s safety lies in anonymity, which means he wasn’t allowed to be real.

This, talking, was what made Kartik real to Aman and he had never wanted to be real so bad before.

More than that, he wanted more pieces of Aman. He was desperate for Aman to talk to him, despite knowing he was a threat, despite knowing he shouldn’t trust him. He wanted to listen and put together the puzzle that was Aman Tripathi and he wanted to devour every little clue he gave him.

It scared the shit out of him but then Aman’s eyes would meet his and, in that moment, the fear of being known would diminish to a small hum in the back of his head.

He hasn’t had to urge to cut himself open in weeks.

▼

Kartik was still going through the documents his previous employer had given him on the area gangs. To say that the person was cautious would be an understatement. They’d waited for a whole week after the job to ask Kartik to make the drop so things would’ve, ‘calmed down’ and then made Kartik wait another week because they’d mailed him the information through an actual post office. Kartik had to come up with a fake address and then pick the thing up and the whole deal was exhausting. But he couldn’t complain. The information was the best he’d gotten in years and they’d just handed it over. The job hadn’t even been that hard but Kartik could guess that the person hadn’t done something like this before. His guess was that they were from a rival pharmaceutical company trying to keep up with whatever new drugs Hopewell were developing.

There were timeframes of jobs actual members of the Vipers had carried out over the last five years, at least. Time and place of where the gang met up every few months. If he could get his hands on a higher-ranking member maybe he could get one of the meeting’s locations. Ozul’s name cropped up only a few times usually in relation to the meetings but there was nothing else on him.

There were a few things that he couldn’t make sense of. Deliveries made from the Hopewell hospital to warehouses owned by The Vipers. Maybe they were peddling prescription drugs? Then there were some addresses linked to various aliases. Most of the addresses were either off the maps or houses owned by shell companies which he could Saf to look into but he didn’t want to drag her into his mess.

Aman would come around every once in a while, when he was a little stressed. Made Kartik some tea, fixed the mess in his apartment even though Aman’s own apartment was a bigger mess. Kartik hadn’t once wondered if Aman was looking for something to incriminate him or even blackmail him, as if Kartik wasn’t a wanted killer who had made way too many enemies over the years to be able to just let someone into his apartment. But Aman was just Aman and around him Kartik was just your average guy next door.

Kartik hadn’t seen him in almost four days. No, he wasn’t keeping count he told himself as he got up to check on the man himself.

That’s when he hears it.

“You’re going to rot away but you won’t decide to come out.” A piercing voice rings out from Aman’s room.

“G, please, let’s just talk.” Aman voice is careful mix of desperation and exasperation and it makes Kartik’s anxiety spike a little.

“I’m done talking to you. You’re barely a person anymore and it breaks my heart to see you like this.”

The door slams and Kartik opens his door just in time to catch a glimpse of a woman with an eyepatch storm out of Aman’s apartment.

“Sorry about the noise.” Kartik was still staring at the retreating figure of the woman trying to figure out who she could possibly be to Aman when the man’s voice startles him.

“Ah it’s no problem” Kartik says sheepishly and Aman nods lightly. He looked tired and not in a way that he just had a long day but in a way that said, he was living one day at a time and each day was getting harder to live through than the last one.

“Are you—“, He’d almost asked if he was okay but direct questions like that didn’t work well with Aman, “Are you making tea?”

“Hm?” Aman looked a little confused.

“I was just really craving it and I don’t have um tea leaves. Only coffee.”

“Oh”, Aman pauses for a second and then he perks up a little when he says, “Yeah, I’m making tea.”

“You wanna come in?”

“Yes, please.” Kartik grinned and Aman cracked a small smile.

Aman hovers over him a little: checking on his most recent injuries and asking about his sutures and Kartik lets him. He knew this was how Aman dealt with feeling out of control: helping other people. It probably wasn’t the best solution to things but it was the only way Kartik knew to help.

They sit at Aman’s little kitchen table in silence for a while. Then Aman just zoned out running his finger across the rim of his mug.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“I’m afraid they’re a bit more expensive than that.”

“I’ll wager my soul then”

“Have you even got one?”

“Nope. Sold it for these silky locks of hair”

Aman laughs for a bit and then that tiredness is back. Kartik decides to back off and let him have his space. The apartment smells like tea and medicines which shouldn’t be surprising. There’s a picture of Aman from back when he was a child and two other kids, a girl and a boy in a playground on the counter behind the table that Kartik had never seen before. Kartik can’t help but notice that the girl is wearing an eyepatch.

“They’re my cousins” When Kartik looks back at Aman he is also staring at the picture, “That’s the woman you saw today.” He says pointing at the girl in the picture, “Rajni.”

Kartik was too dumbfounded by the fact that Aman was actually talking to him to be able to say anything.

“She’s mad at me, for I don’t know uh--multiple reasons. I fucked up a lot. Left her alone, abandoned my dream but mostly she’s mad that I refuse to stand upto my father.”

Aman kept staring at the picture and Kartik stayed silent.

“My father is a horrible man.” Aman whispers.

Kartik is startled when he first hears that sentence. He hadn’t expected Aman to say that for some reason, which just reminded him that he knows absolutely nothing about the life that man had led. That should’ve scared him but it didn’t.

“Trust me, I have no right to pass a judgement like that on anyone.”

“You can make sense sometimes.” Aman laughs an empty laugh.

“Your sister was admitted in Hopewell, wasn’t she?” Kartik’s throat dries up and Aman doesn’t wait for him to answer, “My father built that hospital.” He says and Kartik wants to stop him. He doesn’t want to hear what he has to say, doesn’t want his two worlds to collide. He likes who he is with Aman, without the baggage but Aman had no intention of stopping. Kartik couldn’t exactly complain, he was the one who’d asked for it.

“When my Anatomy-I professor asked our class why we wanted to become a doctor all of us answered in unison.”

“To _save_ lives.” He emphasizes bitterly, “To _help_ people.” He practically sneers at the sentiment.

“There was this patient. This old man, one my first patients that I had to declare brain dead. He had no family and they were going to pull the plug on him later and I thought I’d say good bye and I went in to see him on a night shift and i---” Aman closes his eyes and takes a breath, “There were surgery marks, I don’t know why I noticed but I did, his gown had torn a little and I could see the bandage peeking and—I knew what they’d done. I just knew. His kidney was gone.”

There is a horrible sinking feeling in Kartik’s stomach and his chest tightens like someone was squeezing his ribs and pressing down on his heart. His head was spinning and he tried to stay focused on Aman’s voice, even if it was what was hurting him.

Aman looks right at him and takes in a shaky breath, “My mentor was there.”

“This nice warm lady who almost reminded me of my mother, and she says, ‘Not like there is anyone who would miss him’. Makes lovely biryani, but also engages in organ trafficking”—the tone of the joke is shallow and teary like Aman was coming apart at the seams, and Kartik? He is lost in a sea of emotions: disgust, anger, frustration and betrayal. He is trying to swim out, to breathe and just as he reaches the surface Aman’s voice dunks his head back into the salty water again.

“There were these men behind her, one of them had a snake tattoo coiling down their neck. I didn’t know what that meant back then but I know now.”

“The Vipers” Kartik whispers and Aman nods, looking guilty. _For what?_ Kartik doesn’t ask.

“I looked up the records and there were so many homeless people, people with no next of kin with brain injuries who’d just _disappeared_ —people who wouldn’t be missed.”

Kartik feels sick. His stomach twists and knots but he listens. He has to listen.

“I tell my father and he just stares at me with this look like he was disappointed in me. Disappointed that I cared about something like that. So, I realize there is no point and I do what I do best.”

Aman wipes his tears furiously with his sleeve.

“I _run._ ”

“How—” Kartik struggles to fine the words, he had questions but he couldn’t form them into a sentence, “Did they just let you leave?”

There is silence for a while and Aman’s gaze shifts to the floor, almost as if he was embarrassed.

“My father. I told him if he didn’t help me disappear, I would tell everyone I was gay.”

“Organ trafficking, he could work with but his son being gay? He’s a revered scientist and having a son like me would be... an embarrassment.” Aman scoffs, “Now I carry the burden of knowing he is a vile man and he carries the burden of knowing that his son will never be who he wants him to be."

The air between them is deathly still. They stare at each other, knowing they were on the opposite sides and yet were the victims of the same crime. Since they had been on the opposite sides of the fence they couldn’t comfort each other and because they were both victims, they couldn’t forgive each other either. It felt lonely.

Kartik doesn’t know what to say. If there was anything to say. So, he says the only thing he knows to be true, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’m going to make more tea. You want some?”, Aman’s voice is shaky and the conversation has taken a visible toll on him.

Kartik nods and Aman disappears into the kitchen.

He took a deep breath and sent a quick text to Saf. She pinged back in almost seven minutes. He had been counting. He took one look at the data she had sent him and then took off before Aman could even call out his name.

▼

She comes in around 8pm. Footsteps light and carefree. She turns on the light and, “Oh my!—Kartik!”

Kartik doesn’t know what look his face had held but she took one look at him and knew that her secrets was out.

“Let me explain.” Dr. Jain was calm, even as Kartik glared at her, sat at the dining table they’d had a very nice dinner on only a few weeks ago, holding a gun in his hand, as if everything was going to be okay. It disgusted him and more than that it infuriated him. So, he hits right where it should hurt.

“Has Anjali been taking her immunosuppressants lately?” Kartik’s voice feels foreign even to his own ears, cold and hard as if he’d never seen the sun or felt warmth of another human.

“Did you tell her?” Now, there’s a hint of panic in her eyes and Kartik decides to play.

“Tell her what?” He smiles, “That her mother is a liar? A woman who only cares about her own?” Now there’s anger seeping into every syllable he utters, “That she _lies_ and _steals_ and _kills_ —"

“Stop it!” and he does.

Dr. Jain breathes and tries to walk towards him, “please, you’ve been like a son to me—” which is when Kartik cocks the gun straight at her and she stops.

“Oh no, I haven’t!” He laughs despite the tears stinging at the back of his eyes, “You only give a fuck about your own kid, or you wouldn’t have killed someone else’s family for her—” There is an ache in his chest and he doesn’t know how to make it go away.

“Tell me the truth.” Kartik is shaking with anger right now, “Did you kill Devika?”

“Kartik _please_ ” Dr. Jain almost starts crying. Almost.

“The truth or I kill your daughter” She snaps her head towards him, “You wouldn’t—you—you”

Kartik just raises an eyebrow at her, “You killed my sister. She had a chance at living and you stole it for your daughter. Her life for Devika’s. Fair, isn’t it?”

It hurts to say that. He feels his stomach twisting again and then he feels hot. His lungs burn with every breath he took.

“Okay alright fine!”

“I killed her.” She whispers at first. Then her eyes harden again as she remembers why she made that choice, “The Director gave me an offer and I took it. If it meant saving my kid, I would do anything and so I did.” Kartik can see that she doesn’t regret her decision, feels guilty maybe but doesn’t regret it at all, “Devika” her name feels so _wrong_ on her tongue “…would’ve been fine if—"

“If only you hadn’t decided to steal her heart.”

“My daughter would’ve died!” She screams as if that made it okay, “And Devika was already dead from the moment she saw those murders. They would’ve killed her” She’s frantic in justifying what she did. Kartik isn’t sure if she’s justifying it to him or to herself.

“The Vipers.” Pieces start to fall into place and his throat constricts as he tries to bury the weight of everything crushing down on him like a hurricane. The illusions he had all shatter like glass, the shards stabbing every inch of his skin as he bleeds anger, devastation and pain.

“This is why you wanted me to stay away from them all those years. You didn’t care about _me_ , you just didn’t want to be exposed. You’ve always known and you just let me suffer in the dark” Kartik accuses her as if it meant anything. What use was feeling betrayed by someone who was never on your side?

“Of course, I knew. Your father and his partner saw something they shouldn’t have and decided blackmail was a good idea. The Director needed them dead.”

“Wait—The Director? The Vipers ordered the kill.”

This was wrong. It was the Vipers, the gang his father worked for, the director was just let them stroll in because they were partners. The man outside Devika’s room, he had the tattoo, _why would someone who had no relation to his family want to kill them?_

“The Vip—no! It was the Director’s operation. He had a deal with The Vipers to help him with…things. All your father had to do was simply shut up and do what he was told.”

It took him a minute and then it all clicked. The research facility. The bodies. _People who wouldn’t be missed_. Kartik took a wild guess that Saf was right about the clinical trials part, just that they’d forgotten to take consent from the patients.

His head felt heavy and his chest ached. He needed air. The room around him was spinning and the ground his feet stood on felt unstable.

“Figured it out, have you? You’ve always been a bright child, I raised you as--” Kartik doesn’t have time to think.

“You didn’t raise me. You checked on me once in a year and bought me toys to feel better about yourself. All you did was _use_ me to ease your own guilt”

He looks at Dr. Jain, petrified, and all he can see is Devika’s lost eyes as the pain from her burns nibbled away at her slowly. The doctors refusing to let her stay conscious, assuring him that she would be okay. Dr. Jain, assuring him his sister, his best friend would live and he would have enough time to talk to her.

There was no point to this. He had to end it here. But could he?

“Please, for Anjali’s sake—”

“You already took Devika for her sake!” His vision blurs, was it from the anger? Was he tearing up? Or was he just dizzy? He couldn’t tell anymore.

“I think I’ve sacrificed enough for her.”

Then the fear leaves her eyes and a look of resignation takes over. Her voice is a lot calmer as she says, “Fine. You’re right.”

“You have every right to kill me. But—what happens after?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Kartik wipes away a rogue tear he feels slipping down his left cheek.

“You say that and yet your actions state otherwise”, she is amused now, “You’re that for hire assassin, aren’t you? The one who never misses. The one who has been poking around in our business for _years_.” Kartik stays still, “You want me to believe you couldn’t figure out that it was the Director all along who’d ordered the hit? You did, you just didn’t want to believe it.”

Kartik can’t help it. He laughs, “Oh yeah? and why would I do that?”

“Because you didn’t want a killer, Kartik, you wanted someone to chase and The Vipers gave you just that. With the Director, it would all end with a bullet and then you would have nothing left to live for, no purpose in your life, you would be hollow.” She spits out her words with carefully measured amount of venom in them and then at last she smiled cunningly as if even in the face of death it was her who had won, “At least I had someone to live fo—"

Kartik shoots her once. Right between the eyes. He moves over to her body and all he feels is this hollowness and dread fills his body as he realizes she was right. He had chalked up as life choices as something he just had to do, but when everything was over could he just abandon the way he’d been living all these years? He considers putting another bullet in her, maybe that would feel better but as he stares at her dead, soulless eyes, he decides against it.

He stares at the blood seeping down the floor, washing away the only real connection to the real world or rather the sane world.

Nothing would ease the pain of losing his sister. No matter how many bullets he put into an already dead woman, no matter how many lives he took but he couldn’t just let them live either.

He had come too far for that.

▼

How he makes it back to his apartment is honestly a blur to Kartik. The world was too dark and the city lights were blinding but even so he made it back and when he steps out of the elevator, his vision clears for the first time in hours just to focus on the man leaning outside his door.

It’s the son of the man who had ruined his life and taken everything from him. It’s Aman Tripathi, son of Shankar Tripathi and Kartik should be running _away, away, away_. Instead all he sees is Aman, his stupid neighbor who drinks too much tea and patches him back together no matter how hard he fucks himself up.

 _And look_ , he wants to say to the dead woman in the other corner of the city, _there’s my reason to live._

“Hey doc!” He calls out and Aman turns despite saying over and over how much he hates that nickname, “Got a fix for a broken heart?” Kartik was trying too hard to not cry. Nothing ever was as it seemed with this city. It was safer to just have enemies than friends. The woman who seemed like his family wasn’t anywhere close to the word and Aman who was supposed to be his enemy—

The world isn’t fair, he knows that, he’s always known that. It doesn’t have to offer him anything for taking away Dr—that woman.

“Kartik?” Aman calls out and god, Kartik just wants something good return. Just this once.

Aman is quiet and still in his worry. If he was frantic, Kartik couldn’t see it, “Are you hurt?”

He can feel Aman’s eyes scanning his body, looking for injuries Kartik doesn’t have. He is in pain, yes but not the kind Aman can fix with stitches and bandages. For half a minute after Aman has made sure Kartik isn’t hurt, he wonders if Aman will just leave him here. If there is nothing to fix, what use does Aman have of him?

And then he wonders if Aman wants to run away from him too, if he knew where Kartik had been, the things he’d done. Like he had run away from his father. He’d run away and yet Kartik had dragged him down into the hell Aman had been trying to escape because he just wanted to stay close to the man.

Their eyes meet and Aman is staring at him with an indecipherable look on his face.

“You’re running a fever.” He says softly placing an arm underneath his shoulder helping him up, “Come on, let’s get you into bed.”

That sounded good.

▼

Aman didn’t really know what to do with this. He would prefer Kartik making lewd jokes and being cheeky, this version of Kartik was too unfamiliar. He didn’t know where he had been, what he had done and usually he would tell himself it was none of his concern what other people did. But Kartik wasn’t just any other person.

He tucks him in his bed and all the while Kartik is staring at him as if he was seeing him for the last time. Nothing about this situation sat well with Aman and his anxiety just kept on rising.

When Aman is done, he is about to head into the living room when Kartik grabs his wrist.

“No. Stay.” Aman is hesitant, but Kartik was looking at him like his entire world had just ended and Aman was the only thing tying him to reality.

“Please.” He whispers as a few tears escape his eyes and Aman pushes aside his inhibitions, his survival instincts. Kartik was dangerous and so was his world. Aman couldn’t be a part of it no matter how much he wanted to stay by his side. But for one night, maybe Aman could ignore their reality. Just one night, he thinks when he says,

“Okay.”

Aman held him as close he could to himself, he could only ever hope to protect him from everything harsh and anything painful and wish that nothing could ever hurt him. But he couldn’t do that. He could only just hold him and so he did. For as long as he could, he held him.

Kartik lies there, the warmest he’d felt in years, and he cries. Fucking sobs into the chest of the man he would’ve killed without hesitation only two months ago, a man so warm that he almost made him forget all the cold winters he’d spent alone, shivering by himself. He finds comfort in him.

Comfort in the soft whispers of, ‘it’s going to be okay’, in the scent of tea latched onto the other man and in his hands gently patting his head. Aman placed a soft kiss onto his forehead making Kartik look up at him.

Aman wipes away the tears and Kartik closes in the gap. For men whose history was riddled with violence they kissed so very tenderly as if they were too afraid to hurt each other. Kartik pulls back and stares at Aman for a while, his soft brown eyes riddled with concern, his hair messy for once, the curve of his nose and the red of his lips he captures it all, even his touch: caressing his cheeks and holding him close, he stares at him so he can remember forever what it is like to love someone and see it reflected back. Then Kartik snuggles back into Aman’s chest where he was safe. Where he was warm. Where he was loved.

▼

The morning comes too soon. Kartik wakes up in a daze and finds Aman by the kitchen counter making tea. The apartment was a mess as usual and Aman looked way too clean to be its owner.

“How are you so clean despite living in such dirt?”

“You just aren’t looking hard enough.”

Aman looked tired and worried. Reality was catching up and last night was too good to last. They both knew it. They had been dancing between maybe’s and what if’s and flirting with what could be’s but the night had ended.

“I don’t live in a different world than you Kartik. If I stick my feet in the mud, I get dirty and if I patch up your wounds, the blood splatters onto me too. I’m not immune. I’m not just here so you can come in and forget about whatever it is that you do.”

Aman leans onto the counter with one hand, and buries his head in the other. He rubs his temple and then looks back up at Kartik with a desperation in his eyes.

“Do you have to keep fighting?”

For a moment Kartik wonders what that would be like: to just stop. Kartik’s bones ached from the burden he had carried around his entire life and he wonders what it would be like to abandon the comfortable warmth of his burning hatred and settle into Aman’s cold apartment, a life so mind-numbingly mundane compared to the one he’d been living and absolutely devoid of violence: the only thing he was familiar with, the only thing he knew how to be good at, to abandon it all and leave.

“I’m not asking you to change the past, I’m just asking you to be better.”

It would be horrible but for a moment there, he really wanted to do just that.

Being real meant he would have to face the consequences of his actions again. There were things he had done, some to survive and others to just for his personal gain. There had been no one to judge him for those choices, there had been no one who even knew him but now it was different. It was a scary thing to acknowledge everything he’d done over the years was bad, unjustifiable. How was he supposed to live with that? Kartik takes a step back and he watches the hope in Aman’s eyes die down.

“I see.” The tone was reserved and Kartik couldn’t figure out what Aman was thinking, “Well, if you would step out of my apartment then?”

Kartik’s footsteps are quiet when he walks out but his heart is anything but.

▼

A day later, Kartik gets a mail from Aman.

“Be safe.”

It’s a map. A map of Hopewell research facility and it’s security system. He already had those but that didn’t matter. Kartik sends just two words back. In the other room, ‘I will’ stares back at Aman like a promise and he almost wants to believe it. Aman forgives himself for leaving, just like he forgave himself for staying quiet about what he’d seen all those years. He doesn't have to save everyone, especially not at the cost of his own life. Aman knows that sometimes, you can save only one person and it's okay if that person is you. 

Then Kartik gets to work. Tells Saf to accept no new jobs and to not contact him unless he said so. Tails Shankar Tripathi for almost two months to get his schedule down, to find the perfect opening. Made a note of everyone he met, from Vipers to police officials to his family members. In doing so he realized why the security was so lenient around the facilities, because almost everyone whose job was to catch him had been either payed off or silenced. Shankar Tripathi didn’t have anything to fear.

In all this he tries not to think of Aman. Tries and fails. He knows he’d probably never see him after he was finished and suddenly Dr. Jain’s words came back to haunt him, “What happens after?”. But life goes on.

Kartik decided to strike on a Friday night, when Shankar Tripathi would stay back at the main research facility. This time around he doesn’t have Saf to get him through the digital locks or with the main guard so he has to cut through the fence from the back alley and enter the building through the window on the ground floor. The lock is easy to pick and he slides in easily. The security that had been heightened after Kartik’s previous heist was back down to just a few guards.

Kartik makes his way towards the main lobby and drops his bagpack there. Then he walks towards Shankar Tripathi’s office, guarded only by two armed men. Kartik takes them down easily before they even know he’s there, there’s a bullet in their skull. His gun for once didn’t have the silencer on but today he didn’t care. He was going out with a bang.

The office was locked and he could see a silhouette fumbling inside the room. He just shot at the door until the lock fell off and the door opened. He scans the room and finds Shankar Tripathi, staring at him with just a slight hint of panic in his eyes and hands held up in surrender.

“I’m here to kill you.” Kartik states nonchalantly watching the panic grow in the man’s eyes.

“Why would you want to do that? Did one of my competitors hire you? I can pay you more.” He tries to bargain.

“Unfortunately for you, I’m not doing this for money. Can you really not think of a reason why someone would want to kill you?” Kartik raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t know what he wants to hear from the man. If he shows remorse or feels guilty would it make Kartik feel better?

“I save lives.” Shankar states with pride that was undeserved. It didn’t belong on the man’s face. He didn’t deserve to feel good about himself.

“No. You experiment on lives for profit.”

“Developing modern medicine isn’t easy.” Shankar shakes his head, “There are so many restrictions and so much good lost because people can’t see the big picture.” Kartik’s shoulders sag and suddenly the world seemed even more hopeless than it had a few moments ago.

“And selling their organs to a local gang is part of that big picture?” He asks, just to hear what other lies the man had been telling himself.

“Silence isn’t cheap! I did what I had to do to protect my work”

“Your work did nothing but pile up bodies.”

The irony of taking innocent lives while claiming to be a saviour was lost on the old man. To him there were people who were worth saving and others were simply lab rats. They didn’t fit into his idea of people worth protecting. Lives worth living.

“The police will be here soon. I can talk to them for you. Let you go.”

“Unfortunately, the police have more pressing matters to attend to.”

Then the bomb goes off and the ground shakes.

“Hear that? That is the sound of your work going up in flames. All of your research will burn down to ash. Three other explosions across various warehouses owned by The Vipers have already plunged the city into chaos. By the time the police get here, I’ll be long gone.” The radius of the bombs was pretty small, it wouldn't burn the building down. They were just flashy. Kartik just wanted to give people a reason to go poking around the facilities. To find things buried deep under by power and greed.

“No! No! You can’t do this—” He tries to run and Kartik cocks his gun right at him. He sees fear in the man’s eyes. Utter terror.

At the end of the day, he was just an old man. An old man who had it all but was just so miserable in the face of death despite playing with it all his life. It pissed him off.

Two goddamn months had passed since he’d realized who his target was. Two months, he’d waited and he knew why. He had chased after a shadow all his life just to get here and the shadow was barely a man.

 _This is it?_ He almost laughs, _this is the man who took my life from me_?

He seemed meek and fragile as he begged, “Please. I’ll do anything!”

“Anything?” Kartik laughs hysterically, “Anything, he says.”

Kartik leans in, “With all your money and power, Tripathi, even you can’t undo the choices you’ve already made.” 

A look of utter terror shrouded the man’s eyes right before he put a bullet in his head and at last, he feels something when he pulls the trigger. Not happiness or relief. It’s just a fleeting moment of realization that something has come to an end. Maybe this is the last time he will ever have to pull a trigger.

The flames rise and the city comes alive with sirens and crowds. All that was left for him to do now was disappear.

▼

He lies low at a safe house outside the city for almost three hours. He should’ve stayed there at least a week but he couldn’t sleep in that empty room.

Kartik comes back to the apartment walks upto Aman’s door. All he wants to do is walk in and just have some tea with him. Talk a little, maybe cry. He just wants to see him but he knows he can’t. Not after what he’d done. He would never see Aman Tripathi again and the fact rips at him and tears him down. Right now, he’d settle for just being near the man.

He walks into his room instead and sleeps to make up 10 years’ worth of lost sleep.

When he wakes up the world is still there.

There are fifteen texts from Saf, all about what he’d done last night and how he should’ve asked for her help. He walks to get himself some water and then turns on the news to check on last night’s chaos’ and what he sees makes his blood run cold. He can feel bile rising in his throat as he stares at the screen in horror.

It’s Aman, standing right beside Sunaina Tripathi, as the headline read, “Aman Tripathi: Heir of the Tripathi Corp, back in public eye after almost two years.”

Kartik is running before he has time to process anything, he marches down to Aman’s door and knocks—no, pounds at the door, “Aman!”

He tries the doorknob and his stomach drops when he realizes that the door is unlocked. The entire apartment was trashed. Broken cutlery lay on the floor, the furniture was all over the place and Aman was gone. Kartik walks into the room and lets out a yelp as he steps on something sharp: it’s Aman’s tea mug.

He runs back to his apartment and does the only thing he could think of. He calls Kusum.

“I need help.”

▼

The Hopewell Hospital. Of course, that’s where Aman was. The Vipers, on Sunaina Tripathi’s orders had taken Aman. Damage control. Their empire was on the verge of collapse and they couldn’t have Aman walking free. He was too much of a threat.

The hospital was almost deserted. Someone stares at him for a second too long as he enters the main lobby and it’s obvious why: the black gloves, his jacket hiding the extra magazines and his holster and a face mask and hat to not let his face get caught on camera. He wasn’t going for subtle, he was going to war. Dusk was about to fall and Kartik’s fingers were twitching. With anger and maybe even fear. They shouldn’t have dragged Aman back, maybe then he would’ve spared them, let them have the crumbs of their falling empire. But not anymore. Tripathi Corp needed to burn to the ground if that’s what it took for Aman to be safe.

“14th floor. He’s heavily guarded. Good luck.”

Kartik didn’t need luck.

“Hey uh Saf?”

“Yeah?” She says softly.

“Thanks.”

There’s a small chuckle, “I never asked but how _did_ you make those warehouses explode?”

Despite everything,Kartik cracks a smile," I have a PhD in biochemistry.”

He then turns off the earpiece and gets ready for battle.

He walks to the elevator and already moving in to stop him. Kartik moves fast. He grabs the first guy’s arm with one hand and twists it until he hears the bone crack. With his free hand he takes two shots at the other guy: stomach and heart, pulling back to break the first guy’s neck.

Kartik fixed his face mask and entered the elevator. The elevator opened into a dimly lit hallway which opened into a short hallway that led to the offices separated with glass partitions, and on the one end of the floor through the glass office he could see Aman, sat on a desk surrounded by at least nine armed guards that Kartik could see, staring out the window blankly. He is idly scanning the floor when his eyes land on Kartik. He is too far for Kartik to make out his expression but he knows that he isn’t really surprised.

There was no cover for Kartik, he would be riddled with bullet holes before he could even enter the office. Kartik moves back into the elevator keeping the doors open hiding behind the wall.

“Hey the elevator’s open.” Someone casually points out. Kartik takes a deep breath and tries to get a good look at the position of the guards.

“Intruder!” The same voice calls out. Kartik is too busy calculating, he had a fifteen second window at most if he wanted a fighting chance.

“Well go get him then! What are you waiting for?” Another voice shouts irritated, “He’s armed!”

The guard moves to open the door and Kartik’s eyes are set on his target, “Good god, man.” The man shouts again, moving closer to Aman.

“He can’t make possibly make that sho—” but Kartik does because this is what he’s been doing all his life. Making impossible shots and taking other people’s lives to keep his afloat. The bullet goes past the guard through the open door and the man shouting falls to the ground right in front of Aman. Two men immediately move towards the desk covering Aman. If Aman flinches, Kartik doesn’t catch it.

Then he shoots at the guard at the door and from there it’s chaos.

The guards shoot at him and shatter the glass for him. There’re a few close calls but their aim was abysmal and there was no one to order them anymore. The guards move closer while shooting and Kartik counts. Then there’s silence and Kartik moves: Two shots at the guard right in front of him, who was reloading his gun. He ducks behind his falling body and takes another shot at the guard behind him only managing to shoot his trigger arm. He then sprints towards the office and hides behind a pillar, the shattered glass cracks under his feet.

Out of the corner of his eye Kartik sees Aman struggling against two men way larger than him and he’s about to take a shot when he sees Aman slip through the grip, grab a chair and smash it on one of the guys’ heads. No wonder the security around him was so tight. Then he did a headcount.

Four dead, two engaged, one injured—that left one more.

A pair of hands reach out to grab him but he ducks in time, kicking the guy’s legs making him trip, before shooting him through the skull. He scans the floor again moving backwards towards where Aman had been struggling. He hears a crash and sees that Aman has pushed one of the men through another glass partition, rendering him unconscious. He is about to take a shot at the other guy when Aman punches him, making him fall over.

Kartik stops.

Aman grabs the man by the collar and lifts him up as the man kept on struggling to get a hold of the smaller man.

Aman punches the man over and over and over with the same fierceness each time. He knows the glint in the other man’s eye, he has seen it in mirror: the look of a man who would do anything to survive. There was a preciseness to his anger which made even Kartik scared.

Aman would kill that man with his bare knuckles right now if he had to.

The blood pours and the man stops moving and eventually Aman stops, his knuckles bruised and eyes hollow, staring right through Kartik.

Aman, with his shirt torn in a few places with splatters of blood all over it, bruises forming on his face, and knuckles dripping with blood and Kartik with not a single scratch on him. The two had never been more alike and more different than in that moment.

They saw each other as they were and what they were capable of. Finally, they saw each other.

▼

Aman points to the maintenance elevator. They enter it wordlessly and Aman rests his head against the side. Kartik tries to think of something to say, an apology maybe, just something to break the silence but Aman beats him to it.

“Why did you let me live?”

Kartik stares. Aman is beat. His breath is heavy through his bloodied lip and he doesn’t bother wiping away the blood trailing down his forehead. He looked so tired, as if he’d aged two years in just two nights.

“The day we met in the elevator, you let me live.” He takes in a ragged breath, blood drips from his knuckles before his mouth curves to speak again

“Why?”

Kartik wonders how many times he will have to lose Aman. He’d lost him when he stepped out of his room that morning, he’d lost him last night when he was taken away and he’d lost him five minutes ago when he saw parts of Aman that he had tried to bury deep inside. Now, he was about to lose him again.

“You looked miserable” There’s always a million things he could say when Aman asks him a question but Kartik, always _, always_ , ends up spilling the truth.

“I wanted you to suffer.” Kartik feels the weight of his words crushing down on him. There’s that feeling again, the consequences of his actions pressing down on him. Kartik was scared of someone seeing him for who he was, or rather he was scared of being pushed away because of who he was. He thought of the man he’d met in the elevator what felt like an eternity ago, how he’d spotted his name on the list Saf had given him and he’d immediately thought of Shankar Tripathi. How he'd almost convinced himself to kill that man and now--

“Death was a comfort I did not want to grant you.”

Each syllable escaping his mouth felt like a needle piercing him, for once he felt appalled at the way he did things, the truth left a bitter taste in his mouth and Kartik felt lost. Over time Kartik had convinced himself that Shankar was only a small cog in the machine, The Vipers were the real culprits and by the time he could see the truth, it just didn’t matter who Aman was anymore. Kartik just needed him. Aman’s expression hadn’t changed a bit as he talked and then his face breaks a small grin. Then Aman laughs.

A dry, hollow laugh that sent shivers down Kartik’s spine. His eyes held nothing, they were just dark and empty and it scared Kartik.

Aman nods a little as he quiets down.

“Yeah,” he says the same hollow smile settling on his face, “sounds about right.” Then he closes his eyes.

The elevator stops at the ground floor and Aman walks out first, “I should leave before my mother finds out I’m gone.”

“D-Do you have a place to lay low or—” Kartik doesn’t have the strength to complete that sentence.

“No but I’ll figure something out.”

“I’ve got a safehouse.” Aman stares at him blankly, “I’m not asking for anything I just need to know you’re safe.”

Aman nods soundlessly. The drive there could’ve been quiet, just that Kartik needed answers.

“You knew from the beginning”

“No. I just had a feeling.” Aman is staring out the window now. He hadn’t really looked at Kartik since he’d rescued him and it stung.

“Why didn’t you confirm it then?”

“At first I just didn’t care if I died. Later…I don’t think I wanted you to leave.” Aman whispers the last part so low that Kartik almost didn’t hear it. But he does and he tries to not let himself hope.

“But you’re not asking me to stay.”

“No. I’m not.”

Kartik starts and wonders if he could be selfish just this time. There’s dirt and soot lacing every inch of Aman’s body, and he is covered in blood. He was so clean the last time he'd seen him.

How can he ask Aman to abandon everything he had spent his entire life running away from?

How can he ask him to let Kartik taint him, to let him know every inch of Aman’s soft clear skin and let his bloodstained hands caress it, to have Aman bare his soul to him so he could squeeze out every drop of innocence he had left in him. How can he be selfish enough to ask Aman to abandon the sane world he had worked so hard to build and step into the madness and chaos of his own?

Aman is staring at his knuckles with fear in his eyes, “I don’t want to be like them. I can’t be like them.” That is when Kartik realizes that Aman is not scared of him, nor is he scared not of his mother, but of who he becomes when he enters their world. _His_ world.

Kartik stares at the road, trying not to look at how the city once again had changed. It was still the same rotten palace of concrete and blood.

▼

Kartik disappears rather easily. He leaves right before dawn broke, into the shadows he was so comfortable with. The clean up after the Tripathi job was hard, erasing security footages, wiping any records of Kartik living in the apartment but Kusum was patient and happy that Kartik was relying on her more. He kept following the investigation, had to threaten a few detectives and hurt others to keep it on track but things seemed to be looking up for them.

Then once Kartik had supplied his story and the evidence to the media, Tripathi Corp was done for. There were no crumbs of the empire left and Kartik could finally, _finally_ leave the cursed city.

It had taken him four years to be able to say, he wasn't the same person who couldn't bring himself to stay by Aman's side. There was no reason for him to do that--to change but Aman had made him realize that he could and so he gave it a try. It was hard: To unlearn everything, to change the way he viewed the world, the way he viewed someone else's life, someone else's suffering but he got there in the end. Love can make you do that: change everything you know about yourself and your world and somehow be okay with it.

He pours himself a cup of coffee, he’d stopped drinking tea altogether after he’d realized it would never taste like Aman’s tea. Even if he got the same tea leaves, did everything right, it just wouldn’t. He had taken a lot of effort to completely wipe himself off the records, started a new life as Kartik Singh. So, when a letter addressed to him found its way to his tiny apartment he was surprised. Only Saf knew where he lived, and— _oh._

He recognized Aman’s handwriting. No return address. How did the bastard _find_ him? He rips the letter open with a desperation that would embarrass him but, to hell with that, this was the only man he’d loved. A man who he’d thought he’d never see again.

Kartik reads the letter and it was a mess honestly, like Aman himself couldn’t figure out what he wanted but it didn’t matter. It was a sign, the sign Kartik had spent two years waiting for and he wasn’t about to let Aman slip away again. He tries to keep himself from crying but it didn’t take.

“Cheesy little bastard.” Kartik sobs out softly. Even through the maze of Aman’s feelings and smudged ink, one thing was clear to him: He needed to find Aman.

If Aman didn’t want to be a part of his world then Kartik simply would have to become a part of his.

So, he calls Kusum one last time for a last job.

▼

_Loving you feels like a distant memory I’m desperately trying to hold onto. But it keeps slipping Kartik, what am I supposed to do about that? It’s trying to get away from me, i can’t remember what holding your hand felt like, I can’t remember what you smell like, I can’t remember the comfort I felt in your embrace._

_I remember staring at you but I can’t remember how it made me feel. I know I used to be able to catch even the slightest change in your expressions and now I struggle to remember what your smile was like. I do remember the pain though, maybe because I still feel it. I can’t just let you go, I feel like I’m giving away a part of me._

_I love you._

_I love you more than I have loved anyone._

_I have become scared of that phrase_

_I love you, I say, and just like that your scent is fresh again, I can hear your laughter ringing in my ears and more than anything I yearn to be back in your arms again. I hold out my hand sometimes for someone to hold it, for you to hold it and people around me return a blank look. Why do I still look for you? Even after everything, why does my soul still reach out to you?_

_Maybe I’m not in love with you. Maybe I’m just haunted by the memories of me loving you._

_I met a person who claims to love me and somehow, I cannot believe that. I cannot believe that because I know what love is like and I know how happy I was to just be near you, to know I meant something to you, to know that I could make you laugh. It made me feel happy. I don’t want to think that I could ever have an impact so huge on someone’s life. I refuse to believe that to feel safe. I worry about him, because I also remember how being near you almost destroyed me. How overpowering your existence was and how ethereal you were and I can’t imagine being that for someone—but this isn’t about him. It’s about us._

_I had never been treated with such kindness before. To know such acceptance, such casual affection blew my fucking mind and I was happy when I was with you._

_By loving you, I learnt how to love myself. Just a little, but it helped._

_In a universe where no two people are the same, I am glad to have met you._

_Good-bye._

▼

He sees Aman for the first time in years through a hallway filled with medical students. Aman struggles to get past them, so Kartik makes his way towards him and pulls him to the side. The classroom they’d entered seemed empty. Aman fixes his coat and then Aman looks up, looks at him, the same brown eyes filled with concern and care and –tears?

“Hey.” He cries out softly

“Hey” Kartik says, holding onto the man tightly. Aman’s hands reach out and cradled Kartik’s face.

“How are you here?”

“I’ve got a Ph.D in biochemistry!” he says brightly, “It’s a real one this time” He mock-whispers making Aman laugh and god Kartik has missed that laugh. He has missed his scent. His perfect hair, the curve of his nose and the red of his lips, he has missed it all so much. Four long years and he was still miserably in love with Aman Tripathi.

Good thing was, that love was still reflected back.

**Author's Note:**

> Now somebody please write a Professors!AU.  
> Thank you so much for reading!  
> Please Leave a comment or come scream at me on my  
> [tumblr!](https://username-ari-ver9.tumblr.com)


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